Saturday, July 14, 2012

Benchmaker's Package Update - Ordering Resumes Soon

Next week we're scheduled to resume taking orders for vises and benchmaker's packages.

The new lead time will be 4-6 weeks. However, we have vises in stock, and if you order first, your order should ship within a week. Given our recent updates, we anticipate selling out of current stock quite rapidly. We'll give a head's up when we're going to reopen ordering. So stay tuned.
We've also updated the Split Top Roubo plans to reflect the new handwheels as well as our new End Cap Barrel Nuts.

Our End Cap Barrel Nuts replace the captive hex nuts. These were rather fussy to install so we designed some smaller diameter, longer versions our Barrel Nuts to make it quick and easy to attach the end cap. Simply drill a 7/8" diameter hole in the underside of the front top section and the End Cap Barrel Nut will slip right in (it's slightly undersized.)

We're also transitioning to black-oxide fasteners for the end cap bolts and barrel nut bolts. So all the exposed fasteners will be black for a unified look on the bench.

Plans Pricing

We're changing the way we're offering our bench plans. From now on the construction notes and 3-d eDrawing will be available for free download anytime directly from our Downloads page.

The 20x30 measured drawings, as always, will be mailed directly, or packaged along with benchmaker's packages.

Eliminating the delivery of the digital portion of the plans has allowed us to lower the price, as follows:

Split Top Roubo Plans: $20 Shaker Plans: $24

Benchmaker's Package Pricing

Benchmaker's Package pricing is as follows: (as always, the package includes everything you need to build the bench, except wood)

There will be two versions of the Roubo Benchmaker's Package. One with the current Glide (roller brackets and parallel guide hardware) and one packaged with the Crisscross instead of the roller bracket hardware. The Crisscross version will be more expensive than the roller bracket version, but less than if you were to add the Crisscross later, since the Crisscross package won't include the roller bracket hardware.

The Crisscross will not be fully machined like the handwheels. It will retain most of its sand-cast surface finish. So no, it won't get the vibratory finishing treatment.

The orientation of the logo in that picture looks just fine to me. Tilt your head a bit to the left and you can read: Bench Crafted (I hate to tilt my head to the right, hahaha). I'm sorry, but that "animal face" of the normal orientated logo doesn't look so nice to me, kinda scares me. ;-)